Key Takeaways
- DALL-E is an AI model that creates photorealistic images from text prompts. Easy to use and attracting attention.
- DALL-E gets its name from Salvador Dalí and WALL-E, depicting various objects and styles through AI art.
- DALL-E was trained on large datasets, resides in ChatGPT, is user-friendly, and can be used for various practical purposes.
DALL-E can paint you a picture and produce photorealistic images, but it’s neither a painter nor a photographer. It’s an AI model. For the many of us out there who can’t draw to save your own life, DALL-E is a fun tool you’ll want to check out at least once.
What Is DALL-E?
Using just words, you can describe exactly what you want to see and DALL-E will create an image for you in a matter of seconds. What feels like magic, is in reality a generative AI model developed by Open AI and designed to create images from a text prompt.
Since you only need to have a basic understanding of the English language to use this tool, and not years of painstaking experience learning to draw or paint, it’s attracted plenty of attention. All sorts of people are using it and for a host of things. From world-building immersive scenes for their D&D campaigns to independent writers on Substack who are after jazzy, free-to-use images for their posts.
DALL-E gets its name from combining the famous artist Salvador Dalí, and a robot called WALL-E from the animated Pixar film of the same name.
With an uncanny ability to accurately depict objects, landscapes, humans, animals—you name it—AI art has spurred on a whole new genre of art. It can even render those ideas in a specific art style, such as oil painting, digital art, photorealism, and much more.
DALL-E was one of the first generative AI models to popularize this technology around the world back in 2021, but it’s not the last. One of its main competitors is Midjourney, which is an incredibly powerful AI generator and a personal favorite, not to mention a host of alternative AI art generators to explore as well.
How Does DALL-E Work?
To arrive at this level of “artistic ability”, DALL-E underwent its own form of training. It was fed incredibly large datasets containing hundreds of millions of images, plus the captions describing the picture. In technical terms, Open AI describes DALL-E as a transformer language model.
For those interested, you can read about artificial intelligence explained in simple terms.
How to Use DALL-E in ChatGPT
The latest version of DALL-E lives inside of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that can perform all kinds of tasks for you. If you haven’t got an account for ChatGPT, that’s the first thing you’ll need to do.
Once inside, it looks very much like a messaging app. You can start with a little role-play and imagine that you’re talking to a graphic designer. In the text box, a simple request will get things going: “Can you make a logo for my coffee shop?”
First, ChatGPT asks for a few more details. After replying with a better description, a couple of images were created to my specifications. You can talk back and forth in this way as much as you like, slowly narrowing down the image you want to create.
Alternatively, you can launch straight into a description of the image you have in mind, describing it in as much detail as possible.
Finessing your prompt is the key to creating fantastic images using DALL-E. If you don’t like certain elements, experiment with the words you choose and play with the word order. A bit of trial and error is definitely part of the process.
What Can You Do With DALL-E?
Since the launch of AI image generators like DALL-E right at the beginning of the AI boom, I’ve witnessed a strong community of like-minded people adopting DALL-E and other AI art generators as a hobby. Part of the fun is figuring out how to make the best images, sometimes referred to as “prompt engineering”. Much like any hobby, there are ways to get better at it.
For other people, there are real practical uses. From graphic design to creating logos, concept art, web design, and pictures for your newsletter, the list goes on. Sometimes hiring an expert is out of the budget, so the “do it yourself” approach is helped along with an AI system that can generate very convincing images.
DALL-E is a powerful AI image generator and one of the very first to popularize this new technology. It couldn’t be easier to use; typing a description of what you want to see is all you need to do. It could hardly be called a skill, but over time, people have shown us that it can absolutely become a hobby worth investing time in if you really want to generate stunning AI art.
